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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Ecuador
Netherlands
Portugal
Pakistan
Philippines
Bulgaria
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Switzerland
Bangladesh
Austria
Tunisia
Japan
Greece
Morocco
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Lebanon
Saudi Arabia
Croatia
Israel
Panama
Serbia
Moldova
Paraguay
Honduras
Ireland
China
North Macedonia
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Georgia
Armenia
Lithuania
Dominican Republic
Ethiopia
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Costa Rica
Nepal
West Bank and Gaza
Libya
Afghanistan
Kenya
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Sudan
Kosovo
El Salvador
Nigeria
Latvia
Uruguay
Venezuela
Oman
South Korea
United Arab Emirates
Kyrgyzstan
Zimbabwe
Syria
Kuwait
Montenegro
Malaysia
Zambia
Malawi
Estonia
Senegal
Cameroon
Australia
Finland
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Jamaica
Norway
Botswana
Somalia
Eswatini
Uzbekistan
Sri Lanka
Namibia
Bahrain
Angola
Madagascar
Cuba
Mauritania
Mali
Malta
Qatar
Uganda
Rwanda
Belize
Lesotho
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Haiti
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Congo (Brazzaville)
Guinea
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
Djibouti
South Sudan
Thailand

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Ecuador
Netherlands
Portugal
Pakistan
Philippines
Bulgaria
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Switzerland
Bangladesh
Austria
Tunisia
Japan
Greece
Morocco
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Lebanon
Saudi Arabia
Croatia
Israel
Panama
Serbia
Moldova
Paraguay
Honduras
Ireland
China
North Macedonia
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Georgia
Armenia
Lithuania
Dominican Republic
Ethiopia
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Costa Rica
Nepal
West Bank and Gaza
Libya
Afghanistan
Kenya
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Sudan
Kosovo
El Salvador
Nigeria
Latvia
Uruguay
Venezuela
Oman
South Korea
United Arab Emirates
Kyrgyzstan
Zimbabwe
Syria
Kuwait
Montenegro
Malaysia
Zambia
Malawi
Estonia
Senegal
Cameroon
Australia
Finland
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Jamaica
Norway
Botswana
Somalia
Eswatini
Uzbekistan
Sri Lanka
Namibia
Bahrain
Angola
Madagascar
Cuba
Mauritania
Mali
Malta
Qatar
Uganda
Rwanda
Belize
Lesotho
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Haiti
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Congo (Brazzaville)
Guinea
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
Djibouti
South Sudan
Thailand